Sunday, January 18, 2015

Medieval people believed in magic, both good and bad. Spells
and charms cast with evil intent were called curses and several have survived
from that time. The Anglo-Saxons believed in both charms and curses, including
a curse chanted against a wen or boil. The little wen is told to go away, to
become smaller and vanish into nothing (Her
ne scealt thu timbrien, it says - “Here not build your timbered house.”)

The Vikings also believed in the power of words and words
for magic and curses. In one saga a witch called Busla issues a curse against
King Hring, who has captured and threatened to kill Busla’s foster son. The
curse is chanted at night (a good time for such dark matters) and Busla’s
magical threats are made manifest. In
lines of poetry, the witch claims that her curse will cause Hring to go deaf,
make his eyes to the leave their sockets,
make his bed like burning straw and make him impotent. In addition, any
horse he rode would take him to trolls– and more.

The king is still
reluctant and Busla chants the strongest
part of her curse, magic so dark that she does not utter it at night but which
will cause Hring to be torn into pieces and flung into hell. Faced with these gruesome outcomes, the king swears
an oath to release his captives. The witch then stops the curse.

Curses could be used both as items to propel malice and as a
curious form of protection. Curses were often attached to medieval and
Anglo-Saxon wills, mostly to ensure the last wishes were observed, or for more
day to day purposes. The will of Siflaed
(composed between 1066-68, soon after
the Norman conquest of England, which may explain the strength of the
curse) states “Whoever alters this, may
God turn his face away from him on the day of judgment.” The
Will of Wulfgyth, dated 1046, promises that anyone who detracts from his will
shall be denied all human comfort and joy and be delivered into hell “and there
suffer with God’s adversaries without end and never trouble my heirs.”

This form of invoking God by means of a curse to protect
others remained popular throughout the Middle Ages. In 1407, the Will of Thomas of Tyldeslegh
gives a hundred shillings of silver to a John Boys to make him an apprentice in
a trade and “If anyone hinder this, may God’s curse be upon him.”

Curses could be used by medieval
people everywhere and in all circumstances. When a monk in 1420 discovered that the monastery cat had
peed on the manuscript he had been
copying, the monk cursed the cat and recorded his curse—with a small drawing,
showing pointing hands toward the cat pee—

Here is nothing missing, but a
cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that
urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many
others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where
cats can come.

The ultimate curse could be considered to be excommunication,
where a person and a person’s soul is cut off from God and the comforts and
body of the church. This was feared as a terrible punishment but was not seen
as being permanent, since a person could make amends and have the
excommunication lifted. Bishops and
popes used excommunication as a political weapon and means of control.

Objects could also be
used in a malicious way. An amulet containing such vile materials as human
waste, a splinter of wood from a gibbet or menstrual blood might be hidden
under a bed to cause anything from impotence to sickness. Corpses of dead
animals, such as black mice, were sometimes wrapped in cloth and buried under a
threshold to create trouble for the inhabitants. Sympathetic magic, where a
witch would ‘milk’ a knife stuck in the wall of her cottage, would enable her
to steal milk from a cow. In Lucerne in 1486 2 women were accused of making
hail by pouring well water over their heads. In Coventry in the 14th
century a sorcerer created a wax figure of his neighbor, then drove a spike
into the figure’s head and then heart. The neighbor died. In the 1130s the Jews
of Trier were accused of making a wax figure of the archbishop and melting it
in a fire to cause his death.

Some people were believed to have the power in themselves of
cursing others, particularly if members of their family had been accused of
sorcery. In 1454 at Lucerne a woman called Dorothea was widely believed to be an ill-wisher—her
mother had been burned as a witch and Dorothea, being unpopular, was accused in
her turn.

Certain things were considered to be inherently cursed or
evil in the Middle Ages. The wood of the elder tree was believed to be unlucky
(it was said Judas had hung himself from an elder tree)and it was also thought
to be a witches’ tree. Elder wood can easily splinter, so strictures against
its use were in some ways sensible. Juniper was another plant with a mixed
reputation. Although a sprig of juniper was believed to protect the wearer from
curses, to dream of juniper was said to foretell bad luck or a death.

What could protect against curses? Rowan was said to be a
strong protector. The rowan tree, taken from the Norse “runa” meaning charm,
was often planted close to houses to protect the household against evil. Around Easter time medieval
people would make small crosses from rowan wood to give further safety to the
house.

Illness, famine, flood, plague and all manner of misfortunes
in the Middle Ages were believed to be either due to God’s anger (as with the
Black Death) or the result of a curse. Given the state of knowledge about the
natural world at that time, the idea of deliberate evil by a person (or in some
cases an animal) makes a strange kind of sense. Moreover people were comforted
when they could use prayers, amulets, witch bottles and, in extreme cases, the law
to protect themselves against the occult forces.